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Piracy
by A Libertarian I keep on hearing aboot the issue of piracy since I, like many people, use the Internets. piracy is a big issue since, apparently, through the use of words, we are tying old pirates (people that would go out at sea and steal gold and kill innocent men, woman, and children) to Internet pirates (kids that use Utorrent, Bitlord, Isohunt or azureus to download things they otherwise probably wouldn't be able to afford). piracy is an ethical issue that i, being a wise individual (or consumer if you are from NB(S)C and see people as numbers with wallets), feel I must bring up and take a side on. simply put, I am pro-piracy (the torrenting kind not the parrots, cannons, and gold kind). you may be thinking “lol, you are a supporter of theft which supports terrorists and (insert BS group the MPAA claims piracy supports) who are working to undermine our security lol!!11!!”. So why do I support piracy? simple, I support individual rights. the issue of intellectual property is one that plain pisses me off. people keep saying that, if you have an idea, no one else should have the right to have it too. intellectual property, in that respect, is BS. it is an effort to take away liberty. to best explain my point of view, here is an example: say you built a factory. the factory uses new tech that you have built and developed yourself. you were able to develop it because of your individual right to thought, speech, property, and action. interestingly, the factory isn't completely invisible. people can see and understand your advanced water wheel, your conveyor belts, and some of your manufacturing equipment. in a more technical way, their own minds have been imprinted with the ideas that you discovered. the ideas you discovered, however, are not property. the ideas are nothing more than a form of assembly. the concrete objects are your property. you own them. you own the advanced water wheel, not the concepts that created it. you own the conveyor belt, not the matrix of images which, when put together, created it. a good piece of proof to that conjecture is the fact that you can't control a concept without potently violating the rights of others (for instance: you can't force someone to alter the materials they own, their personal property, if the use of those materials were to create something that resembles your inventions since doing so would violate their rights over their life, liberty, and property (they can't dispose of their property in the manner they choose)). my last sentace in those nested parentheses is, in my opinion, the justification of intellectual freedom as opposed to the belief that you can own ideas. the ability to dispose of property in a manner than doesn't damage other people's property, property rights, is something that can't be had with so-called intellectual property rights. such things, erroneously called “rights”, are the elimination of the potential of, and thus the rights to, your property. think of this when you contemplate whether downloading an mp3 is ok: why do they cost money in the first place? like all forms of art, and expression for that matter, music isn't supposed to cost money. the idea that a form of expression can cost money is not founded in the idea that you can own a sound or an idea, but rather that you need a rationing system for the expression of that form of art. a good example would be a theater play. the play only has a certain number of seats meaning that the creators have to find a way to ration out the seats in order to make the most money and not have excess quantity demand. they have the right to charge money since it is their property or they have limited control over the property (i.e. they are renting the theater). they have no rights over anything past their own bodies and their physical property (i.e. the room). they have no rights over the sounds or media that is created from their selves and their instruments, as those things are not property but rather combinations of waves and other non-physical things. a form of expression is not owned by the performer but rather it is their physical selves, which create the expression, that are owned by the performer. a pirated mp3 is not a piece of stolen data but rather a copy of the expression. the only way in which piracy could be a form of stealing would be if you literally went to the performers hard drive, in their house, and took the physical data (magnetic disk platters in their current form) since, doing so, would be a form property violation. you can't touch their personal property. you own your magnetic disk platters and the combinations on them (i.e data). no one has the right to control your disk platters or look at them (since doing so would be a violation of your property rights) unless, of course, you took the platters out of your hard drive and let someone see them or you gave them permission to use your property. you have a right to your hard drive, what magnetic patters it contains, and the location of the read/write head at all times. it is a right that the RIAA, MPAA, and the government don't have. how can pirating be good? you may say: “prating is bad lol1!!!11! it will make no one develop stuff!!11!1” wrong. people create things for free all the time. free expression is not a lie but a reality. I am currently running Sabayon Linux with firefox and open office writer which are all free. open source software, software where there is no concealment of personal expression (by letting you see the source code), is far superior to the closed source kind many of you are familiar with. Its been over ten years, with tons of pirating, and we are not seeing the end of the computer age, as the man in the “ don't coppy that floppy ” video would have you think. I am not saying that you should only pirate, since purchasing data you like is a form of donation. just like how many of the linux distributions survive off of donations, it is the performers who shall do the same. imagine a world where performers of all kinds perform for the sake of expression instead of money. a world where a movie is based off of a piece of intellect instead of demographics and marketing-dickwad statistics (see Transformers). imagine a world where music is pure and property freedom, including freedom of life, is cherished by all. this is the world I want and it is a world where the false right, the right to own an expression, is as absent as dictators and communism. Sharing is caring F*&K the RIAA, MPAA, and paten laws. Here is a good video about how the MPAA is trying to screw us all over: here __NOEDITSECTION__ Category: Opinions Category: Opinions by User A Libertarian Category: January 16, 2008 Category: January 2008 Category: Piracy Opinions Category: Rights Opinions Category: Breakfast Opinions Category: Random Other Crap Opinions From The Opinion Wiki, a Wikia wiki. From The Opinion Wiki, a Wikia wiki.